I am revising my opinion about machine shops and blogging. When I wrote about social media and machining businesses in this commentary, I discouraged shops from launching a blog. What I said in that commentary is still true: Blogs are easy to launch, but also easy to do badly if not given sufficient attention.
However, a different argument—and to my mind, a persuasive one—comes from MFG.com. The company recently developed this knowledge center about machine-shop marketing for MMS Online. It is an informative resource, and well worth clicking around in. The page that discusses blogging can be found here, so I won’t try to capture all it says. But one point from that page is worth amplifying: MFG says the benefits of blogging apply whether your shop is adding a blog to its existing site or even “building your primary Web presence as a pure blog.”
That’s right—the blog could be your shop’s website. Visitors to your shop’s URL could land on the blog as the first page they see. After all, the typical machine-shop website is a landing page with links to separate pages for the shop’s history, equipment list and contact details. A blog could include menu links to all those same pages. Meanwhile, using the blog as the main page would give the shop a far more dynamic online presence—showcasing whatever news is most current. If your shop can offer updates, insights and new photos at least once a month, then using a blog as a website would be a great way to keep the shop’s Web presence energetic and fresh.
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